Systems for verifying the identity of persons confined under home arrest programs and the problems associated with such identity verification are set forth in the co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/041,698 entitled "Remote Confinement System", filed on Apr. 21, 1987, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. That application, which on June 27, 1989 matured into U.S. Pat. No. 4,843,377, also discloses a system for remotely determining the compliance by a remotely confined confinee with behavioral restrictions associated with the confinement, including particularly the performance of unsupervised tests such as breath alcohol tests upon such a confinee along with the verification of the identity of the confinee.
The concept of remote confinement, or home arrest, is developing as a practical alternative to confinement in correctional institutions for certain types of criminal offenders. Home arrest programs are becoming increasingly popular for the purpose of relieving correctional institutions of overcrowding and reducing the cost associated with punishment by incarceration in such facilities. The development of home confinement systems requires a practical and effective method for filling the need to verify from a central office the presence of the specified confinee at an assigned remote confinement location.
In a typical remote confinement system of the type to which the present invention relates, a central office is equipped with means for selectively communicating with various remote confinement locations for the purposes of verifying the presence (identity) and optionally, the degree of sobriety of the confinees assigned to those locations. These means include a provision for selectively establishing communications links with each home confinement location. For example, provision may be made for a computer at the central office to select from a data bank the designated phone number of a specified confinee and then automatically dial, by way of a conventional telephone network, the phone number of the location to which the selected confinee is assigned.
Upon answering the telephone, the confinee is audibly prompted to identify himself or herself and optionally, to take an alcohol breath test. The confinee then takes the breath test using a portable breath tester and transmits one or more pictorial images from the remote location to the central office. These transmissions carry the visual image of the face of the confinee and optionally, the results of a breath alcohol test. Upon receipt at the central office the transmitted images may either be stored there fore subsequent identification and/or documentary or evidentiary purposes or subjected to immediate manual or automatic analysis for identification and determination of compliance with the restrictions to which the confinee may be subject including for example the requirement to be present at the remote location at certain times of a given day or restrictions on the use of alcohol. Patent application Ser. No. 07/041,698 teaches various identity confirming techniques and behavioral condition testing devices, which may be incorporated with advantage into remote confinement systems.
Identification of a person by viewing a pictorial image of a person's face is a straight forward and reliable method of identification when the identification is to be performed manually. The identification of remotely confined persons by the transmission of pictorial images is described in several of the embodiments disclosed in application Ser. No. 07/041,698.
In one prior art home confinement system employing pictorial identification, the confinee, upon being called by the central office, was instructed to place himself or herself before the camera of a picture telephone and transmit back one or more self images. Taking of these images was initiated by the confinee pressing a button on the picture telephone. If required, the timing of one or more such pictures could be arranged to include images of the confinee in the act of blowing into an alcohol breath tester as well as an image including the readout or display of the breath tester to show the result of the test. While proving quite useful and representing a significant advancement in the art, such systems are not entirely satisfactory.
First, the above systems provide no means for positively assuring the best possible camera focus and quality of transmitted images. Second, the distance between the camera and both the confinee and breath test apparatus varied depending on where the confinee chose to locate his or her person with respect to the camera. As a consequence, there was no way of ensuring that either the face of the subject or the breath tester display would be of a consistent scale. Thus, images might at times appear too small for clear reading or accurate identification. Also, the lack of a consistent camera-to-subject distance made use of automated, e.g., computerized, identification techniques much more difficult. Third, in the prior art there was no means to limit the content of the images transmitted to the central office. This is a serious shortcoming for reasons now to be discussed.
The only pictorial information legitimately required for monitoring purposes are the image of the face of the confinee and optionally, the display of the breath tester. The former image is used for identification purposes while the latter is used to indicate the result of a breath alcohol test where one is required. Because prior art systems were subject to variation in the distance between the camera and the confinees' face and/or breath tester display, the amount of "background" visible in the transmitted image could be considerable. As used herein, the term "background" in the foregoing context refers to the content of the transmitted image other than the confinee or portions of the monitoring station apparatus itself. Such background may include images of persons or things which, for reasons of privacy, should not be transmitted to the central monitoring office since they are not required to be viewed there in order to carry out the intended functions of the remote confinement system, i.e., determining that a designated confinee is present at a particular location and, optionally, determining the confinee's blood alcohol content.
The need to avoid the transmission of background and to transmit only the image of the specified confinee results, in part, from Applicant's realization that transmission of an image containing other information is socially undesirable. Surveillance of a scope extending beyond monitoring the presence and/or sobriety of the confinee might well be considered an unjustified and perhaps even illegal invasion of the constitutional rights of the confinee or others. For the same reason, a remote confinement system should not be amenable to the inadvertent or unwanted actuation of the picture taking and transmitting functions since that would be tantamount to convert surveillance. Only deliberate action on the part of the confinee should allow viewing at the central office. Accordingly, there is a need for monitoring apparatus at the remote confinement locaton which reliably ensures that only the image of the confinee necessary for identification will be subject to surveillance. It is also important that the surveillance will occur only when specifically intended by the confinee in response to an appropriate cue from the central monitoring office.
Prior art systems are subject to the inadvertent transmission of images to the central office because their image formation and transmission functions are initiated by means of a pushbutton associated with the camera at the confinement location. If the confinee presses this button when not substantially occupying the full imaging field of the camera, an intrusive transmission of background images to the central office will result. The pressing of this button by a curious or playful child has a similar effect. Accordingly, there is a need for a remote confinement system wherein image formation and transmission are not readily subject to initiation by means other than the specifically intended action of the confinee, and even if camera activation does accidentally occur, transmission of significant background will be avoided.
Prior art home arrest systems using visual identification of the confinee also lack means to provide proper lighting conditions. The formation of pictorial images which can be easily and reliably interpreted requires more predictable and uniform illumination than one can depend on to be present in varying home arrest environments. Furthermore, it is often desirable to transmit a visual image of the breath test readout. This may require lighting conditions entirely different from those required for illumination of the confinee's facial image. For example, the luminescent L.E.D. displays of the type desired and found on some available breath testers may appear "washed out" (i.e., dim or unreadable due to lack of contrast) in a pictorial image if illuminated at the relatively high levels which may be desired for producing a clear image of a confinee's face. Thus, a need exists to control the lighting conditions in connection with the transmission of images for confinee identification as well as the interpretation of breath test results in home arrest systems.